Maragha

On April 10, 1992 Azerbaijan committed a barbaric massacre of the population of Maragha village in Martakert (Nagorno Karabakh), during which 53 unarmed villagers, mostly women, children, and elderly persons were slaughtered in cold-blood and close to 100 more were taken hostage. The massacre was repeated on April 22-23, 1992, when a handful of survivors came back to the village to bury their dead.

One of the most tragic events of the recent Armenian history is the slaughter of unarmed civil population in Maragha village of the Martakert region of Nagorno Karabagh Republic. The horrible tragedy is well documented and is confirmed by many international human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch/Helsinki.

Vice Speaker of the House of Lords of the British Parliament Baroness Caroline Cox, who at the time was on a humanitarian mission to Nagorno Karabagh recalls:

"On April 10, 1992, forces from Azerbaijan attacked the Armenian village of Maragha in northeastern Karabakh. The villagers awoke at 7 a.m. to the sound of heavy shelling; then tanks rolled in, followed by infantry, followed by civilians with pick-up trucks to take home the pickings of the looting they knew would follow the eviction of the villagers.

Azeri soldiers sawed off the heads of 45 villagers, burnt others, took 100 women and children away as hostages, looted and set fire to all the homes, and left with all the pickings from the looting.

I, along with my team from Christian Solidarity Worldwide, arrived within hours to find homes still smoldering, decapitated corpses, charred human remains, and survivors in shock. This was truly like a contemporary Golgotha many times over."

April 10, 2002. The National Assembly issued a statement regarding the tragic events in Maragha village of Jraberd province, saying that on April 10, 1992 Azerbaijani armed detachments burst into Maragha village, brutally murdered and deported its population of more than 4,000. According to the statement, the village was not a legitimate military target. In Maragha, Azerbaijani armed forces acted out of hatred towards the Armenian population of the village. Representatives of Russia and Iran, who were visiting Nagorno Karabagh on a peace mission witnessed the events. The statement said, in part, "The NKR National Assembly appeals to the international community, to the United Nations and its General Assembly, to the OSCE and its Minsk Group, to the Council of Europe and its Parliamentary Assembly and brings to their attention acts of violence against the Armenian population of the Maragha village. We demand that those acts of violence be condemned based on the norms of international law and qualified as an act of genocide perpetrated by the Azerbaijani Republic against the Armenian people."